


Goes On Forever

by Neelh



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Trauma, Trying To Make Sense Of The Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 04:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10236209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: Sophocles can't tell why Tapu Koko is so interested in the unimpressive hyper kid from Kanto.Ash can't either, but that's beside the point.





	

**Author's Note:**

> traumamon: gotta repress 'em all!

“I still don’t understand why Tapu Koko is so interested in you, though,” said Sophocles, his voice loud in the almost empty classroom. “I mean, no offense, but you’re not really the kind of person that I’d associate with powerful guardians like Tapu Koko.”

Pikachu snorted with laughter as Ash turned around in his desk seat, but the boy showed no sign of any emotion except for simple curiosity, as if Sophocles had suggested that there might be a small shower of rain tomorrow.

Mallow blushed in outrage on Ash’s behalf, since he wasn’t defending himself, and yelped, “Sophocles, that’s rude! Ash and his Pokémon are very strong!”

“Why’s that?” Ash asked, giving no sign that he had heard Mallow.

“Well, you might be strong, but you’ve got two Pokémon, and they’re not even that rare. And the most interesting things so far that aren’t because of Tapu Koko liking you are that you enrolled here instead of going home after your vacation and those two Team Rocket people and the talking Meowth,” Sophocles explained, listing off the final couple of reasons on his fingers.

Pikachu laughed so hard that he fell off the desk and onto Ash’s palm. The boy had contorted himself like a fleshy pretzel to catch Pikachu, not even looking at where his hands were going, and his eyes widened for a moment before he hugged Pikachu and said, “Hey, buddy, don’t do that!”

“Stop ignoring me!” Mallow interrupted. “I mean, you made a point, Sophocles, but we’ve known Ash for about a week. We don’t know much about each other yet!”

“Actually, Meowth doesn’t belong to Team Rocket,” Ash mused. “He’s kind of in charge of them? Or maybe it’s Jessie who’s in charge. I’m not really sure. But I have more than two Pokémon!”

“Really?” Sophocles asked sceptically, eyes narrowing. “Tell me them, then.”

Ash’s face lit up like a child watching fireworks. “Oh, man, let’s see. There’s Charizard, Snorlax, Talonflame, Kingler, Gible, Scraggy, Noivern, Leavanny, Palpitoad, Buizel…”

As he continued listing off his Pokémon friends, his smile became more wistful and nostalgic.

“…Torterra, Totodile, Quilava, Corphish…”

“Does he know that we’ve never heard of half of these?” Mallow asked Sophocles.

“Speak for yourself,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out which one’s he’s lying about.”

Mallow raised an eyebrow at that. “I don’t really think that Ash is _capable_ of lying.”

“…Hawlucha, Glalie, Muk, Bayleef, thirty Tauros…”

“Um."

Sophocles gave Mallow a look that clearly said _I told you so_.

“…Gliscor, Oshawott, and Muk!” Ash finished, grinning a little sadly. “Plus Pikachu, of course, and the ones I released. I’m not sure if Greninja was actually released, though. I mean, I still have his Poké Ball and everything, and it’s the same with Goodra. But Greninja was still Ash-Greninja when he left, so I’m not sure.”

“Pi pikachu pika,” Pikachu explained from Ash’s arms. “Kachu pika!”

Ash nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. I’m kind of glad that they can’t be captured, though. Is that weird?”

Pikachu shook his head. “Pikachu!”

Mallow and Sophocles stared at Ash.

Ash blinked at them both, a little confused.

“Okay, how many Pokémon do you really have?” Sophocles asked.

“I told you!” replied Ash. “Do you need me to tell you again?  Heh, I guess I didn’t realise how many there were. Professor Oak doesn’t complain, though, so I guess they’re all behaving well.”

Sophocles groaned. “Ash, stop kidding us. Nobody can get that many Pokémon at your age.”

“Wait,” Mallow said, leaning against Kiawe’s desk. “How old _are_ you, Ash?”

Ash’s brows furrowed. “What’s the date?”

When they told him, Ash took a little while to count on his fingers.

“Sixteen,” he finally came out with. “I’m sixteen years old!”

They couldn’t help it. Both Mallow and Sophocles’s faces fell into a look of severe shock.

“Sixteen?” spluttered Sophocles.

Mallow didn’t fare much better. “How is that possible? You don’t look anything like Kiawe!”

“Pika pikachu,” said Pikachu, his tone sounding rather dry.

“Yeah, it’s mostly because of how I act, isn’t it?” Ash smiled. There was something in his eyes, though, that made his friends believe that maybe, somehow, he really had thirty Tauros and was actually sixteen, and that he had a reason for Tapu Koko to be interested in him.

Mallow nodded. “Too right! I thought you were younger than me, and I’m fourteen!”

“You’re old enough to have travelled a lot, I’ll admit,” said Sophocles, “but thirty Tauros? For one person? And you said something about an Ash-Greninja, which is something I’ve never heard of before.”

Ash laughed nervously and scratched the nape of his neck. “Yeah, the Tauros were in the Kanto Safari Zone on my first League Challenge. They always ran in front of me when I tried to catch a Pokémon, so I’ve got a herd of Tauros now.”

“And the Greninja?” asked Mallow.

For a moment, Ash seemed to wince, but if anyone had noticed then they would believe it to be a trick of their mind. He smiled, relaxing back into his childish demeanour. “Greninja? Yeah, I met him when he was a Froakie and I’d just arrived in Kalos, and we both grew a lot together. Then, when he was a Greninja, weird things started happening, and it turned out that there was an ancient form of evolution similar to Mega Evolution, but we didn’t need a Mega Stone or anything. Our hearts just needed to be united as one! We almost won the Kalos League, but we lost to Alain, and then there was the whole thing with… Well, he’s protecting Kalos with Zygarde now, so I don’t get to train with him anymore.”

There was a moment of silence as Mallow and Sophocles tried to process that, but before they could speak, Ash had made a half-hearted excuse and left the classroom.

 

-

 

“Mallow, there’s no way you’re going to believe this,” Sophocles said into the phone.

“I can’t believe it,” she responded flatly, holding her phone in the crook of her shoulder and neck as she stirred the soup, making sure that she was neither too fast nor too slow. “You’ve finally got a girlfriend.”

Sophocles screeched. “What? No! I was looking up Ash on the internet, and you won’t believe what I found out!”

“I’ll look it up later, Sophocles. I’m busy,” said Mallow, before realising that there was no way that she could hang up the phone, as one hand was gripping the handle of the saucepan, and the other was stirring the soup.

Probably not knowing this, Sophocles continued talking anyway. “Ash has been in six regional leagues, Mallow, and he’s used new Pokémon every time. They all actually belong to him!”

Mallow hummed. “And this is unbelievable?”

“No, I’m not at that bit yet!” he replied, and he was beginning to sound a lot more agitated. “The Greninja is real! I saw it happen in the official recording of the finals of the Lumiose Conference – Mallow, he was a finalist! – and then, I’m not kidding, during the Kalos Flare Incident.”

Mallow almost dropped her phone into the soup. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not!” said Sophocles. “I saw how close the two events were, and I looked it up, and you can see him in the official news footage and everything, Pikachu and all!”

“Sophocles, I’m cooking, and you know that I’m going to want to look it up right now, and I’m _cooking_. Do you know how hard it is for my family to get this soup _just_ right?” Mallow asked, scrunching her face up.

“Sorry,” Sophocles replied, not sounding sorry at all. “But seriously, just turn the heat down for a little while and watch it on your phone. It’s not that difficult.”

Mallow propped the spoon up against the soup pot and the kitchen countertop before turning the dial down and moving her phone to sit in her hand.

“You bet your life I am!” she grinned, before hanging up on her friend and bringing up the video streaming app on her phone.

 

-

 

“But why wouldn’t he tell us?”

“It’s so cool, and I wanna know more!”

Kiawe leaned in between Mallow and Sophocles. “What are you two talking about?”

Sophocles let out a little snort of laughter. “Ha! Kiawe, I always knew you were a gossip!”

“I was being polite,” he replied, his expression not changing from its default of flat and stoic. “I know that you two are talking about Ash. I want to know why.”

“Well, I was wondering why Tapu Koko is so interested in him, and he told me about all of his Pokémon, but then I found out that he was part of the Kalos Flare Incident, and he came second in the Lumiose Conference, and in the Sinnoh League, he took down a Darkrai and a Latios!”

“I’m terrified of Pikachu now!” Mallow added, grinning.

Kiawe blinked slowly, his stare burning through his two classmates. “I know.”

“Admit it, you’re surpri-!” Sophocles began to say, before spluttering to a stop. “Wait, what?”

“I know what Ash has done,” said Kiawe. “The night after Tapu Koko battled him, I researched what he has done.”

He paused for dramatic effect, only to see Mallow and Sophocles look slightly uncertain.

“I can use the internet too, you know!” he complained, before running a hand through his hair and returning to his previous unfettered demeanour. “Regardless, I researched Ash, saw what he has done, and I was impressed. That is why I regularly inform him of what an honour it is to train by his side.”

At this point, Ash was probably playing with his Pokémon before realising that he should have left for school ten minutes ago, despite the fact that he lived with one of his teachers. This was a feat that only Ash could achieve. To be honest, it wasn’t hard to believe that he had spent six years of his adolescence living on the road, challenging Gyms and meeting more Pokémon than most people would in their lives. It was, however, hard to believe that Professor Kukui would leave Ash in the house without any responsible, adult-like people.

“So, you know how weird it is that he’s really immature even though he’s sixteen and everything, right?” asked Sophocles. “And why he’s here, instead of in a region with a Pokémon League, and why he hasn’t had a biopic made of him yet!”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Kiawe, very frankly.

Mallow blinked. “Huh?”

“What Ash has done with his life, and what he is currently doing, is not for us to pry into. We have pushed enough boundaries in looking into his past already, and you would cross a line if you questioned him about it,” explained Kiawe. “If he wants to talk about it to any of us, he will. But for now, we should continue to treat him the way that we have before. Mallow, that _includes_ not being scared of Pikachu.”

Mallow nodded, and Sophocles joined in shortly after.

“I see that I have been understood,” Kiawe stated, before turning on his heel and walking to the main school building.

 

-

 

Ash woke up screaming.

This wasn’t a new development. This had been happening for about five years, on and off, and it always took some getting used to for Ash’s new companions.

It was at times like this that Ash missed Brock. That wasn’t to say that Ash did not miss Brock at any other time. In fact, Ash missed Brock, on average, twice a day. Brock always knew what to say in these moments, as dawn broke gently, still not having fully rested the people below. Being there for most of the events had given Brock an uncanny ability to tell what Ash’s nightmare had been about that time, and an inkling of what sort of comfort needed to be offered.

After Brock had left, Ash had had Cilan to confide in, then, surprisingly, Bonnie. Now, Professor Kukui would climb the ladder to the attic room upon hearing Ash’s distress, which could happen almost every night at the worst times.

“What was it this time?” the professor asked, sitting on the sofa bed next to Ash.

With a shrug, Ash replied, “When I watched Arceus die. Me and Pikachu were fading from existence because of the time paradox, and Pikachu had disappeared, but I guess that Arceus didn’t get better in the dream like he did in real life, because I stopped existing after it. But then I woke up, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I mean, I could’ve relived Lucario dying again.”

“Pikachu…” murmured Pikachu, laying a paw on Ash’s cheek. Ash scratched him under his chin absently.

“Ash, that’s…” Professor Kukui paused for a moment before rubbing Ash’s shoulder and saying, “Do you want some Tapu Cocoa? It calms your nerves more than anything, you know.”

They both pretended that Ash didn’t visibly flinch at the mention, no matter how loose and punny, of the guardian deity who had taken an interest in Ash.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Ash replied, running his hand down Pikachu’s back in an absent motion, like he knew every tuft of fur like his own body. Then again, the boy probably did.

“Okay. I’ll go make some for you. And you,” said Professor Kukui, looking at Pikachu, “can make sure that he’s doing okay, yeah?”

Pikachu nodded. “Pika!”

By the time Kukui had descended the ladder, it was already likely that Ash had gone back to sleep, or was at least pretending to. But, just on the off-chance that Ash was still awake, fearing memories that had long since passed, the professor set the kettle to boil, and scooped a generous helping of cocoa powder into an old Pokémon League mug from Kanto that was sent in a care package by Delia Ketchum herself.

Kukui hoped that the cup would make Ash smile. The kid deserved it.

**Author's Note:**

> i can't wait for sophocles to hear about the shamouti thing
> 
> the title is from never quite free by the mountain goats. i am a sucker for the light at the end of the tunnel and then more angst. i hate angst


End file.
